Education and Skills Bill

I would like briefly to welcome the 180-degree U-turn in Government policy reflected by the amendments, and to pay tribute to my colleagues in another place who were more convincing than the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) and myself. According to the Government's explanation of the amendments, they decided that the case for changing from the status quo was not compelling. As the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton mentioned, I would have thought that the evidence we took in the consultation sessions at the beginning of the Committee's proceedings was fairly clear in making the argument against those changes given that a number of outside bodies gave evidence to say that the changes were unnecessary. As well as drawing attention to this satisfactory U-turn, can the Minister explain what changes he hopes to implement to improve the communication between his Department and the independent schools sector. We have heard from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that that communication has been extremely effective up until now, but it is clear that there are major weaknesses in such communication. Not only was part of the sector taken by surprise by the changes, but if they had been consulted on in a more serious manner, we might have avoided the protracted debates and time-consuming processes that we have gone through in recent months.